Google Trends Show a Decline In Bitcoin Searches

In 2017, bitcoin secured three positions on Google’s most popular searches of the year: “How to buy bitcoin?“, “How to mine bitcoin?” were second and sixth in the “How to” questions category, while “What is bitcoin?” was fourth in the “What is” questions category. However, the first few months of 2018 have proved that bitcoin may have to give up its position on Google Trends.

Bitcoin’s Interest over Time

As shown in the graph below, Dec. 17, 2017 to Dec. 23, 2017 had the highest number of searches since 100 is the maximum search interest. However, it started dropping gradually until it attained a value of 46 in between Jan. 7, 2018 to Jan. 13, 2018. From then onwards, it went up and down before declining to 20 from Mar. 4, 2018 to Mar. 10, 2018.

These numbers match the price of bitcoin this year – it hit a surprisingly low value in Feb. 2018 where at one point the price fell down to $6,048. Even today, bitcoin has bounced back from the number, but it has only reached $9,597 in a month.

Bitcoin’s Interest by Region

According to Google Trends, bitcoin is more famous in searches in South Africa, Slovenia, Austria, Australia and Netherlands, but has the least searches in Japan, Taiwan, Iran, Egypt and Russia. However, trending stories still include bitcoin with “Mt. Gox and cryptocurrency exchange” at number 20 and “Bitmain and bitcoin” at number 24.

Mt. Gox had a lot of influence over bitcoin’s price – when trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi sold $400 million in BTC and BCH, the price went as low as $8,741 on Mar. 9, 2018. Since, people were angered by his decision, he explained his actions by stating, “As a result of the consultation with the court, I considered it necessary and reasonable to sell a certain amount of BTC and BCC at this point and secure a certain amount of money for distribution resources, and thus, I sold the amount of BTC and BCC above. I made efforts to sell BTC and BCC at as high a price as possible in light of the market price of BTC and BCC at the timing of sale.”